by Joel Goldman
"That's fantastic," Mason said. "No, it's beyond fantastic. When can I get it back?"
"Tomorrow morning," she said. "But it's a little banged up," she added.
"Banged up? How bad?"
"A little, actually more than a little, a lot. And it's not running. To tell you the truth, it's sitting. On blocks. Without wheels."
Mason slumped against the back of the booth. "Is this how you tell the widow she's a widow? I've got good news, Mrs. Smith. We found your husband, or at least most of him."
"Oh, come on, Lou. I know you love that car, but it's just a car. I had it towed to George's Body Shop. Just like you asked."
Mason let out a sigh, realizing that Samantha was still cradling his hand in hers. He drew his hand back, ignoring the slight resistance she offered. "Thanks, Sam," he said. "I appreciate you taking the trouble to come here. You didn't have to do that."
"Yeah, well," she said, pushing her hair back with one hand, hiding the other in her lap. "You know our motto: to protect and serve. This falls under customer service."
Mason wished he'd kept his hands to himself, not stumbling into another awkward, post-lover exchange with Samantha. Her not-so-subtle flirtation was a complication he didn't need.
"Good," he said, nodding like a bobble-head doll, struggling for something to say to put their conversation back on a professional track.
Samantha sat back, took a deep breath, and clapped her hands. "Okay, I give up," she said. "A woman should never tell a man she isn't over him, especially when he's found somebody else. I'm not over you, Lou, but I guess you know that. I'm working on it, and I'd appreciate it if you'd help me out by acting like a jerk a little more often. I know you've got it in you," she said with half a laugh.
Mason smiled. "I can be a jerk," he said. "No problem. How about if I beat you up on the stand at Jordan's preliminary hearing on Friday. Then you could hate me."
"I wouldn't hate you," she said. "I'd feel sorry for you if that's the best defense you can give your client. If it is, you better make a deal."
"It's worse than that," he told her. "I don't even have anything to beat you up with."
"Tell me what you do have, Lou. I don't just want to win. I want to be right. I'll take my badge off and just be your friend. Try me," she said.
Mason considered her offer. He knew she was telling the truth when she told him she wanted to be right. He also knew she didn't want him to fail, and letting his client be sentenced to death or life imprisonment when he could have made a deal that left her some chance to live again would be a terrible failure.
"Okay," he said. "I'll tell you what I've got and you tell me what kind of deal Ortiz will make. Fair?"
"Fair," she said.
"Everything you have against Jordan is circumstantial," he began.
"I don't call fingerprints, hair and fiber samples at the scene and on the victims circumstantial," Samantha interrupted. "And I don't call an eyewitness who puts her at both scenes circumstantial, and I sure don't call her confession to Gina Davenport's murder circumstantial. The only thing we don't have is videotape of her killing them and we're damn close to having it on Dr. Gina. You know the trial judge will let that Channel 6 videotape into evidence even if Pistone wouldn't. Once the jury sees that tape, they won't hear another thing you say."
"Like I said," Mason continued. "Everything you have against Jordan is circumstantial. I have enough crap to throw on your case to raise a reasonable doubt."
"Beginning with your theory that Trent Hackett killed Gina because she was going to report him for a rape he didn't commit. And if he did commit it, Jordan has a terrific motive for killing her brother to go along with all that lousy circumstantial evidence we dug up. We only have to convict her of one murder to put her away forever."
"Fine. You don't like Trent for Gina's murder. How about Arthur Hackett? He had one of the best motives, money. He cashed in on Gina's life insurance policy, recovering the money he was going to lose when she jumped ship a year from now."
"You've seen Arthur Hackett. He's disintegrating faster than the invisible man. No one will believe he could throw Gina through a plate-glass window, then turn on his own son. Not even for five million bucks. Tell me you've got something better, Lou."
Mason emptied his beer, rolling the glass between his hands. "Maybe. Even I'll admit this next part is a little murky. Gina and Robert Davenport illegally adopted their daughter Emily. Terry Nix was the baby broker. They were all in St. Louis at the time. Nix was working at the hospital where Emily was born. He deep-sixed the medical records of the real mother. Somebody else, I don't know who, forged a birth certificate showing the Davenports as Emily's natural parents. They couldn't adopt because Robert Davenport was a drug addict and wouldn't pass the social services evaluation for a legit adoption."
"Which has what to do with the murders?" Samantha asked.
Mason pointed a finger at her. "Nix also dealt drugs to Robert Davenport back in their St. Louis salad days. Nix lands in Kansas City, hooks up with Centurion Johnson in a textbook example of vertical marketing, selling drugs and babies. They were probably supplying Robert Davenport. Somebody tipped off Emily's real mother, who, up to that point, had never tried to find her daughter. The mother is put on to Gina. Things start to come unraveled. Gina gets nervous. Nix and Centurion kill her to keep her quiet."
"Your rubber-suit fantasy has more appeal than this one. Assuming you're right, where does Trent fit in? Who kills him and why?"
"I don't know," Mason admitted. "The little shit tried to kill me. Why shouldn't someone besides Jordan try to kill him?"
"That's clear thinking," Samantha said. "Stick to soda between now and the trial. Your new-sorry, Abby- told me about her phone call to Gina Davenport. Is she Emily's birth mother? You might as well throw her into the suspect pool."
Mason hesitated, wanting to keep Abby out of their conversation, though he knew he had to put everything on the table. "There's a good chance. Abby delivered a baby at the same hospital a week after the birth date on Emily's birth certificate. The hospital can't find any record that Abby was ever a patient there."
Samantha drummed her fingers on the table, working the angle Mason had given her. "The rumor we picked up was that Abby thought she was Jordan's mother. We heard that's why she posted the bond."
Mason said, "That's what she thinks. According to the autopsy report, Gina couldn't have kids. Whoever got Abby to call Gina must have known the truth."
"Have you told Abby she put her money on the wrong baby?"
"Not yet. Not until I'm certain," Mason said. "Gina was also skimming money from the charity she set up in her daughter's memory. Maybe Nix and Centurion were in on that too. Maybe Trent was a bagman for them. I don't know. The murders should be tied together, but I can't make it work."
"I can," Samantha said. "Jordan had the motive, the opportunity, and the rage to do them both. That's what the jury is going to believe."
"Assuming you're right, what kind of deal will Ortiz make? I may not have much, but I've got enough to muddy the waters."
Samantha shook her head. "You don't have that much mud," she said. "I'd bet on pleading guilty to second-degree murder on Gina's case, taking into account Jordan's emotional history and the sympathy the jury might show her when they find out what an asshole her old man is. The jury might blame him for some of this, figuring he drove her to it. She gets fifteen years to life, maybe gets out in ten years."
"What about on Trent's murder?"
"Ortiz will want a guilty plea on that one too. He'll probably agree to the same sentence, let them run concurrently. Maybe make her serve the minimum of fifteen years. Two brutal murders a week apart is a lot to overlook."
Mason reached back across the table, patting her hand for an instant. He knew she was right. It was time to make a deal. "Thanks, Sam," he told her. "For everything. I mean it."
"Hey, listen," she said. "All in a day's work. See you in court, Counselor."
Chapter 31
Mason met with Jordan the next afternoon. She was anxious to see him, giving him a bear hug when the guard ushered her into the cramped, windowless room where Mason waited.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" she said, letting him go.
"I've been pretty busy working on your case," he answered. "Besides, the guards tell me you've had company."
"Yeah, Abby has been here a couple of times. I still haven't figured out how she got involved in all of this, but I'm glad she did."
"Blame it on me," Mason said, dodging the question. "Are they treating you okay in here?"
Jordan walked around the perimeter of the room, extending her arms like yardsticks, measuring the space. "You know, this room is actually smaller than my cell. I didn't think anything could be smaller than that. The guards haven't bothered me. One woman came on to me and I thought we were going to have a problem, but she backed off."
"Jordan, tell me about the baby you gave up for adoption," Mason said.
She looked at him, her arms drooping at her sides. "It happened the first time my parents put me at Sanctuary. I was pissed at them and my brother. This guy, he wasn't even cute, I just figured, what the hell, it couldn't be worse than my brother. When I missed my period, I got scared and I wanted to get an abortion. Terry talked me out of it."
"What did your parents say?"
"Don't come home until the baby was gone." Sitting down at the table in the middle of the room, she clasped her hands together, laying them out in front of her, her eyes moistening. "Lou, you've got to get me out of here. I want to find my baby."
Mason knew that people often responded to incarceration the same way they did when a doctor told them they had a terminal illness, grinding through denial, anger, and bargaining until they accepted their new reality. Jordan was twenty-one years old. Fifteen years was almost as long as she'd been alive. Mason didn't know how she could ever accept the reality he was about to give her.
"Jordan, it may be a while before you get out."
Jordan's eyes flickered, light draining from her face like a picture morphing from color to black and white. "What are you saying?"
Mason gathered himself, looking at her, not wanting to tell her, not having a choice, giving it to her straight. "I think we should consider a plea bargain, making a deal with the prosecutor."
"What kind of a deal?" she asked, her voice rising an octave, the veins in her arms beginning to bulge as she clamped her hands more tightly together. "What does that mean? That I plead guilty? I'm not guilty! You don't believe me, do you?" she accused him, jumping out of her chair, knocking it over behind her. "I'm not guilty! I can't stay here. You've got to get me out!"
Jordan planted her palms on the table, leaning over Mason, pushing him back with her demand. Mason rose, circled past her, picked up her chair, and put his arm around her. She wrestled away, Mason holding on, pulling her back.
"It's not that simple, Jordan. It should be. It should only be about guilt or innocence, but it isn't. It's about proof, theirs and ours. It's about what a jury might do. It's about the risk you are taking with your life. I need you to know all these things so you can decide. I'm not going to make you do anything."
She wouldn't bend, keeping her frame rigid, fighting his grip and his words. "If you think I'm guilty, what chance do I have?"
Mason patted her on the back. "I don't think you're guilty, Jordan, but I'm not on the jury," Mason said, dispensing the standard lawyer's bromide, not telling her that he wasn't certain of her innocence any longer, but wouldn't let his doubt stand in the way of a vigorous defense.
Mason returned to his seat, Jordan still standing, her head turned to the side, not meeting his gaze. "Your preliminary hearing on Friday will be just like the one last week. The judge will bind you over for trial for Trent's murder. You won't get bail. Your trial on Gina's murder starts in two months. Let me tell you what the jury will hear."
Mason recited the evidence in a flat, neutral monotone, letting his words fall like small hammers on Jordan, beating the resistance out of her until she fell back in her chair, her head on the table, covered by her arms.
"I didn't do it, any of it," she said, her voice muffled with sobs.
Mason said, "You've got two choices. Take your chance with the jury at both trials. If we lose the first case, we can probably make a deal on the second since you'll already be looking at a life term, maybe even the death penalty. If we win the first case, we roll the dice a second time. Your other choice is to make a deal on both cases. I talked to the prosecuting attorney. He'll accept a plea to second-degree murder on both cases with a sentence of fifteen years to life and an agreement that you'll be out in fifteen. You'll only be thirty-six years old. You can still have a life."
Jordan sat up, her face a patchwork of red blotches, her empty eyes a preview of the institutional bleakness of prison. "You really think I should do this, don't you?"
"You're risking the rest of your life and any chance of ever finding your child. The prosecutor may ask for the death penalty. He wants that hanging over your head. You need to think it over and tell me what you want to do."
"When do I have to decide?"
"Friday. The deal is on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, we go to trial. That's the way Ortiz does business. He squeezes as hard as he can."
"I want to talk to Abby first. Will you ask her to come see me?"
"Sure," Mason said. "She'll come tomorrow. I'll see you Friday morning."
Mason called Roy Bowen in St. Louis as soon as he returned to his office. "Roy, it's Lou Mason. Did you find those records?" Mason asked without saying hello.
"Weather here isn't bad for this time of year. We understand you folks got an early frost, probably catch us tonight," Bowen said.
"Roy, I haven't got time for good manners," Mason said. "I need answers."
"You get older, Lou, you develop more patience, get used to things taking longer than you want them to. I'm navigating my way through a city bureaucracy that's dedicated to getting back to you tomorrow, only tomorrow never comes. It would be a hell of a lot easier if you had a name or two you wanted me to track down. Collecting the employment records on everyone who worked in Vital Records more than twenty years ago is a nightmare for those people. They're giving me every excuse except executive privilege and national security."
"You're right and I'm sorry, Roy," Mason said. "The prosecutor is squeezing us to make a deal by Friday or we go to trial. I've got more loose threads than a cheap suit and nothing to stitch them together with."
"Then give me some names, son, and I'll get you an answer."
Mason gave Bowen the names and Bowen promised to call him back before the preliminary hearing. Mason hung up, opened his dry-erase board, felt his eyes cross at his spaghetti graffiti, and closed it. He leaned against his window overlooking Broadway and tried to imagine making the decision he'd left for Jordan. He couldn't bring it into focus any more than he could the murders. The case had become a black hole, sucking reason and certainty into another dimension.
Blues banged on Mason's office door once, pushing it open without waiting for an invitation. He was dressed in black, a color he chose when working the streets. He once explained to Mason that he chose it because it intimidated most people and hid bloodstains from those who weren't so easily persuaded.
Mason said, "I don't care what you had to do to get it, just tell me you got something I can use."
"You're not as particular as you used to be. When we first started out, if I jaywalked, you'd turn me in. Now, you just want results, is that it?" Blues asked, filling the space between the door and Mason's desk.
"I've done a lot of things I didn't think I would ever do since I met you," Mason said. "I'm not proud of some of them, but I've learned to live with them, mostly because I didn't have a choice at the time."
"You had a choice," Blues said. "There's always a choice. You're just getting used to doing things my way."
"Are
you going to tell me where you've been and what you've found out, or do I just write a check for this therapy session and call it a day?"
Blues stretched out on Mason's couch, his feet extending out over the other end. "You told me to poke around into Centurion's business, so I poked."
Mason picked up a rugby ball from the floor next to his desk and rifled it at Blues who deflected it with a flick of his wrists. "I'm not paying you for an information strip tease, Bluestone," Mason told him. "Give."
Blues sat up, grinning. "You are going to like this.
Centurion is still in the trade, cooking up meth in a little cabin in the woods, storing cocaine and heroin there till he moves all that shit to the street. Some of the inmates at Sanctuary mule for him."
"Any ties to Robert Davenport?"
"I found one of the middle men that passed the shit to Davenport. He convinced me that Centurion was his source. Didn't take much convincing. By the time we were done talking, he was begging to tell me."
Mason knew that he should feel guilty about using Blues to extract information this way, but he didn't. He would have screamed to the rafters if the police used the same tactics on a client of his. He accepted the necessity of Blues's tactics, rationalizing them in an ends-justifies-the-means framework that pushed him farther from the principles his Aunt Claire had spent her life protecting.
Each time Mason took advantage of Blues's particular skills, he felt a small piece of him die, just as he had when he'd killed a man who would have killed him, just as he had when he'd pushed a judge to compromise herself to save Blues. Just as he did as Blues made his report, the lights on Broadway illuminating the night, leaving his soul closer to darkness.
"Do you think Centurion put the cocaine in Gina Davenport's office?" Mason asked.
"My source says yes, but he doesn't know why. Tell you what else I found out. Those two boys that snatched you out of your car?"
"Yeah," Mason said.
"They were free-lancers working for Centurion."
"Centurion hired them to find out if I kept a copy of the baby ledger."